ABSTRACT

In this disciplinary overview, the historian Nigel Copsey charts the evolution of historiographical interpretations of the far right after 1945 through to the present day. He considers the ways in which historical interpretations have developed and he establishes that whilst historians have typically approached the far right through ‘classic’ fascism, this does not mean that historians should not speak to debates on the nature of the ‘far right’ in the contemporary ‘post-fascist’ era. For Copsey, it is important not to cut the threads of continuity between ‘classic’ fascism and today’s far right. Through careful application of the concept of ‘neo-fascism’, we should, Copsey argues, bring fascism’s past into the present.